Re: Unpredictable programming

Bruno Desthuilliers wrote:
> Bob Badour wrote:
> (snip)
>
> > which naturally separates the concern for
> > correctness from the concern for efficiency. Those of us who understand
> > the relational model and SQL, understand that one can address the
> > concern for efficiency separately, for example by creating indexes, by
> > clustering data, and by automating the translation from the declarative
> > language to the physical hardware.
>
> May work for DBMS, but would it be that easy for a more general-purpose
> language ? (real question, not trying to make a point)

I believe it would be possible, although I have no opinion on "easy." I note that nothing about progamming languages is easy. Nonetheless, in general it makes sense to burden those implementing the lower levels vs. those implementing the upper levels. Consider how, if we make one O/S programmer work harder, we are leveraging thousands (at least) of programmers who will use his work. The same applies to DBMS programmers and language implementors.

> > The OO computational model is simply not as amenable to higher order
> > transformations. The executable code more directly reflects the
> > specification. For instance, optimizers do not combine object classes to
> > transform a collection of possibly inefficient state machines into a
> > single more-efficient state machine.
>
> But would that really be - at least in theory - impossible ? (idem as above)

I didn't notice that he said "impossible"-- he said "not as amenable."  

Marshall Received on Thu Jun 29 2006 - 18:00:55 CEST